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Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

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Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#91

Post by DoingIsLearning »

softwaredoug wrote: post #18

I’m more interested in what would cause people to ignore their doctor and choose to believe whatever insane thing is on social media about, say, vaccines. There’s always been places you could go and find nonsense. But what’s different about this moment? What’s drawing people to nonsense? IMO social media gets the blame, but it’s just the vehicle for something darker happening. Something more about widespread nativism…

Umberto Eco said it best:

“Social media gives legions of idiots the right to speak when they once only spoke at a bar after a glass of wine, without harming the community. Then they were quickly silenced, but now they have the same right to speak as a Nobel Prize winner. It’s the invasion of the idiots.”

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#92

Post by krapp »

ppf wrote: post #43
krapp wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Social media is as successful as it is precisely because it works so well as a communications paradigm. No popular social media platform is difficult to communicate on, they draw in so many users because they're easy to use. My mother who can barely use Windows knows how to chat with me on Facebook. People use social media to communicate between friends, family, coworkers etc all the time. That's how all of that mone…

>it still works as intended for 99% of people. I would argue that it feels like it works, for 99% of people. I strongly believe that "social media" is a low-quality and unsatisfactory replacement for meaningful social interaction and bonding.

Social media was never intended to be a replacement for meaningful social interaction or bonding, any more than telephones or letter writing, or the generation of forums and personal websites it more or less replaced.

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#93

Post by tracerbulletx »

cortesoft wrote: post #83
docdeek wrote: post #67

There's a quote in a Michael Crichton novel (The Lost World) that seems relevant here. As part of a rant connecting the idea of the internet and evolution, a character opines: "This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big contin…

I get the sentiment, and there might be nuggets of truth to the idea, but there are some fundamental aspects of biological evolution that make it different. Biology evolves through mutation propagation, and larger populations tend to regress mutations to the mean more than smaller populations. Behavior changes don't require any mutations, and they can be shared in all directions (unlike mutations, which can only be s…

Agree 100% with everything you said here. Continuing with the example of food, the ability to watch a Youtube video about an emerging food trend on Saturday, try making it on Sunday because they taught me how to do it, then watch 5 more channels doing the same idea in different ways, and eventually understand the idea enough to use the techniques does not seem to be restricting the evolution of ideas in any way and seems to actually rapidly accelerate it.

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#94

Post by version_five »

cortesoft wrote: post #83
docdeek wrote: post #67

There's a quote in a Michael Crichton novel (The Lost World) that seems relevant here. As part of a rant connecting the idea of the internet and evolution, a character opines: "This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big contin…

I get the sentiment, and there might be nuggets of truth to the idea, but there are some fundamental aspects of biological evolution that make it different. Biology evolves through mutation propagation, and larger populations tend to regress mutations to the mean more than smaller populations. Behavior changes don't require any mutations, and they can be shared in all directions (unlike mutations, which can only be s…

> Second, if this were true, the number of innovations would have decreased after we became globally connected. This hasn't been the case

I read the argument as being about diversity. There are innovations, but as you point out in the next paragraph, they spread quickly, which could be good, but also destroys a lot of diversity. Look at how different UI design trends spread e.g. I don't consider that a clear win. Having many less connected groups could potentially lead to more, and more diverse innovations, vs. everyone jumping on the same bandwagon

The other thing that spreads more quickly is disease (here I mean metaphorically). If everything is the same, it gets infected the same way, and I believe there is an element of that when you look at online discourse, at dark patterns and other user hostile business practices, etc.

There are some reasons homogeneity is good, especially locally in time, but it presents an evolutionarily disadvantage over longer scales, which is what I took to be the point of the MC quote

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#95

Post by MrRadar »

I think science fiction author Charles Stores put it best in this 2016 blog post[1]:

> 2007 is when the human species accidentally invented telepathy (via the fusion of twitter, facebook, and other disclosure-induction social media with always-connected handheld internet devices). Telepathy, unfortunately, turns out to not be all about elevated Apollonian abstract intellectualism: it's an emotion amplifier and taps into the most toxic wellsprings of the subconscious. As implemented, it brings out the worst in us. Twitter and Facebook et al are fine-tuned to turn us all into car-crash rubberneckers and public execution spectators. It can be used for good, but more often it drags us down into the dim-witted, outraged weltanschauung of the mob.

[1] https://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/01/some-am...

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#96

Post by lovemenot »

mrfusion wrote: post #85
grawprog wrote: post #16

I think social media needs to be redefined. What the average person thinks social media is is very different than what it actually is. I think a lot of people think big social media platforms are actually communication platforms, they're not. They're designed intentionally to be difficult to communicate on. That the not the purpose of them, it's in the name 'social media' they are the media, you are the social. They…

> true global communication platform would look nothing like the social media we have today. Perhaps it would look like that brief golden age when everyone had a self hosted blog and we subscribed to each other with RSS readers.

Not everyone chose to do that then. and I don't think of it as a golden age.

I wouldn't know how many deliberately chose not to self-promote in that way, but it is probably far more than those who chose to blog.

I think system architecture is part of the present problem, but it is not at the root. Even during your so-called Golden Age the deeper issue was already manifest, though not yet scaled.

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#97

Post by wwweston »

errantmind wrote: post #78
wwweston wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Any society that is premised on the rule of law already has to solve that problem in the enforcement; there is no rule of law without arbitration of facts relating to whether the law is upheld or not. So, probably the courts. That's an imperfect solution, but it beats the hell out of the position that any attempt to arbitrate the truth is unacceptably oppressive. On another level: everyone has an obligation to arbitr…

The courts are specialists in the law, not the truth. I sincerely doubt them deciding what is true and what isn't "beats the hell out of the position that any attempt to arbitrate the truth is unacceptably oppressive". It would quickly turn into a dystopian nightmare. Have you never thought about why freedom of speech is an important and worthy fundamental right?

> The courts are specialists in the law, not the truth

You're confusing the fact that courts are legal institutions directed by legal professionals with the conception that's all they are. In fact, a court is a process. That process is guided by law, and results in legal findings, but it is not limited to the legal sphere when it comes to findings of fact and truth. Where a court lacks specialists in truth, advocates on both sides will find whatever ways they can to bring them to the discussion.

And again, there is no such thing as rule of law without examining questions truth. You want liability for poor engineering standards? Courts must ascertain what good engineering standards are. You want murder to be illegal, and people to be tried for violating murder laws? Courts must ascertain evidence, often scientific evidence relating to whether or not someone is guilty. A court without capacity or authority to weigh in on truth cannot apply the law.

> Have you never thought about why freedom of speech is an important and worthy fundamental right?

Enough to know that speech and robust discourse are in fact a significant part of courtroom proceedings.

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#98

Post by ben_w »

2939223 wrote: post #81
docdeek wrote: post #67

There's a quote in a Michael Crichton novel (The Lost World) that seems relevant here. As part of a rant connecting the idea of the internet and evolution, a character opines: "This idea that the whole world is wired together is mass death. Every biologist knows that small groups in isolation evolve fastest. You put a thousand birds on an ocean island and they'll evolve very fast. You put ten thousand on a big contin…

Globalism is the great filter. Social media is the first taste. COVID as an example, would have previously been a contained regional outbreak. Globalism made it an instant problem for every continent. Social media exacerbated responses in most every country. Interconnectivity is fragility.

Plenty of global pandemics before COVID. Globalisation is how we got so many viable vaccinations so quickly.

Monocultures are fragile. The only part of globalisation that gives me cause for concern is that it can make bigger monopolies that would otherwise be possible.

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#99

Post by v_london »

grawprog wrote: post #16

I think social media needs to be redefined. What the average person thinks social media is is very different than what it actually is. I think a lot of people think big social media platforms are actually communication platforms, they're not. They're designed intentionally to be difficult to communicate on. That the not the purpose of them, it's in the name 'social media' they are the media, you are the social. They…

These are some very good points. For me the biggest problem with existing social networks is how difficult it is to get to know new people through the applications. Despite us spending more time online than being present on the physical world (this is probably also a problem, but one for another time), we get remarkably little real social interaction out of these hours spent.

Good news is that the seeds of better social do exist. I'm trying to set up one of them, http://www.reason.so/ which will match people with similar interests into small (3-10 people) group chats with the intention of creating small communities where it's easy to discuss things you find interesting semi-privately (i.e. somewhere between a public Twitter thread and a private group message). By keeping the chats small you also get rid of clickbait, astroturfers and "thought leaders" who only want to build an audience instead of actually interacting with other people.

The biggest problem with setting up a social network like Reason is probably monetarisation. People just aren't ready to pay for social media when Facebook, Clubhouse and co are free.

Re: Some biologists and ecologists think social media is a risk to humanity

#100

Post by ben_w »

krapp wrote: post #92
ppf wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it still works as intended for 99% of people. I would argue that it feels like it works, for 99% of people. I strongly believe that "social media" is a low-quality and unsatisfactory replacement for meaningful social interaction and bonding.

Social media was never intended to be a replacement for meaningful social interaction or bonding, any more than telephones or letter writing, or the generation of forums and personal websites it more or less replaced.

I dunno, replacing it was exactly the vibe I got from the Facebook people when my employers sent us to a Facebook dev conference in London.

Whole thing creeped me out.

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